I would like to address the Austin School Board regarding the upcoming school referendum.

I believe that the public should be informed on how many school administrative staff are the in district. I think it is their elected duty to give the public a list of all the administrative/directors that are employed and review how to reduce the number of directors/admin and consolidate duties. The savings could be used for staffing teachers as they are the front line of educating our children.

I believe that the school administration has grown quite large in past years. There appears to be a lot of directors in the system.

Each time there are budget meetings, we hear of teacher lay-offs, resulting in increased class sizes, increases in activity fees, lunches, etc.

I’m showing my age, but in my Austin High School years, there were more than 1,500 students for grades 10, 11 and 12, and we didn’t have nearly the amount of administrative staff.  We also received a very good education.

With the state of the economy, the property owners are being asked to give more to county, city and schools.

They cannot continue to carry all the load. Let’s see if the school board can come up with some ideas on administrative staff reductions.

Ruth Schmidt

Austin